Rue Avijit Roy, Paris

Reporters sans frontières / Reporters Without Borders / RSF renamed the road of the Bangladeshi embassy in Paris to “RUE AVIJIT ROY” today, in honour of Avijit Roy, the first to be slain as part of a series of fatal attacks on outspoken secularists in Bangladesh this year, which still continues today.

Congratulations you “soldiers of Allah”, members of Ansarullah Bangla Team! Thanks to you, whenever people think of Bangladesh, they’ll be reminded of a brave people, voices of dissent who were so powerful, the only thing you could do to stop people from listening was to silence them forever. But alas, they speak on! They live on. Thanks to you, their voices are more powerful than ever, their books, “The Virus of Faith”, “The Philosophy of Disbelief” recognized worldwide. We are no longer in the 7th century Arab dessert my friends. Striking our necks will no longer serve to silence us. Didn’t the Quran tell you that? Just like your beliefs, your actions will be relegated to the afterlife. This, the dunya, is our world. People will remeber the names of Avijit Roy, Humayun Azad, Washiqur Rahman, Ananta Das, Niloy Neel, and all the other people you’ve killed in order to protect your flimsy beliefs from criticism, as long as they remember Bangladesh. By their names and their writings, Bangladesh will be known. Not as an Islamic State. Bangladesh will never be an Islamic State. It will NEVER be governed by Islamic Sharia’. Nor will Pakistan. And your names and your beliefs will die in the shadows of great men and women.